


The Lie

by Calais_Reno



Series: Fin de Siècle [7]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Character Death, Don't copy to another site, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M, NOT Holmes or Watson, POV John Watson, Post-Reichenbach, Reichenbach Falls, The Final Problem, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-24 20:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22003960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calais_Reno/pseuds/Calais_Reno
Summary: "Looking ahead at Holmes, his long legs striding up the path, hearing snatches of the tune he was humming— I experienced one of those rare moments we all have, when we suddenly realise that we have everything we’ve ever wanted, but that happiness so complete is not destined to last. My breath caught in my throat, tears came to my eyes, and I halted, trying to fix the moment in my permanent memory. A part of me understood that this was the last I would have of him, and I knew that I would need to come back to it someday."After Reichenbach, Watson grieves the loss of Holmes, even as changes in the government show that Moriarty's machine continues.This is part of a Victorian AU. Each part can be read separately, but the overall story arc will make more sense if read in order.
Relationships: Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Fin de Siècle [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551937
Comments: 12
Kudos: 60





	The Lie

**Author's Note:**

> This part is very angsty. Not that Reichenbach is ever NOT full of angst, but if you don't need that kind of distress, proceed with caution!
> 
> I began writing this series to answer a question: What if Holmes fell, but Moriarty won?  
> The timeline on this series is extended from the canon, and will leave our boys separated for longer, but in the end, they will be together, and they will win! 
> 
> Meanwhile, things are getting worse for Watson...

Memory is a strange, elastic thing.

I remember the minutes I stood on the path above the falls, looking in vain for Holmes, my mind stupidly going over the events that brought me there. The covert escape from England, the dreamlike days we wandered in the mountains, the stop in Meiringen. The innkeeper had recommended that we walk up and see the falls, and so we did. The day was perfect, cold and clear. As we so often had, we walked in silent companionship. After many weeks of stress, he seemed at ease, relieved of work and invigorated by the crisp air and the breathtaking view. When the path narrowed, I fell behind a few steps.

Looking ahead at Holmes, his long legs striding up the path, hearing snatches of the tune he was humming— I experienced one of those rare moments we all have, when we suddenly realise that we have everything we’ve ever wanted, but that happiness so complete is not destined to last. My breath caught in my throat, tears came to my eyes, and I halted, trying to fix the moment in my permanent memory. A part of me understood that this was the last I would have of him, and I knew that I would need to come back to it someday.

Then came the Swiss lad with the note, and my own fateful decision to return and help the English lady. Holmes encouraged me to go back; against my better judgement, I went. In my mind’s eye, I can still see that last glimpse of him, his back against the rock, his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters.

My panic, then, discovering the ruse, and my hurried ascent back up to the falls. The cigarette case and Holmes’ note told me what had happened on that path. Moriarty had confronted him, he wrote, and there had been _the final discussion of those questions that lie between us._

How I arrived back in London, I have never recalled. I assume that an investigation of the event took place, vaguely remember being told by an official-looking person that there was no doubt: Holmes had fallen to his death. His body was not recovered.

People must have cared for me then, kind people urging me to eat, to sleep, to be calm. I might have thanked them. I hope I did. Kindness is rare and must always be acknowledged.

Perhaps it was Mycroft Holmes who managed my return to England, back into the care of my wife. I have recollections that I slept and awakened, slept again, awakening always to the same nightmare. Mary urged food and drink on me, called my colleague when I did not make any effort to stay alive.

 _Brain fever_ , Dr Anstruther said. As a doctor myself, I am familiar with the diagnosis. Having had a few patients who’d been so afflicted, I’ve always suspected that these cases are bids for attention. Now, I knew that I was wrong: attention was the last thing I wanted. I wished people would stop trying to keep me alive. All I wanted to do was forget.

The mind and the body are not entirely divorced, as medical schools would have us believe. What happens in the brain affects the body in more ways than are understood, and the body’s ills can certainly affect the mind. I felt my body rebelling, waiting for my mind to catch up and grab control. This did not happen, instead, my brain tried to tell me all was well, but my body told my mind that I was dying. I was very ill for six weeks, I think.

Mary kept the room dark and quiet, occupied our daughter Rose so that I could rest undisturbed. It was not so much sleep as a waking deadness that I felt. I suppose I slept. Sometimes I would wake, overcome by a restless need to hasten up a path and find him. He could not be dead— he had just gotten ahead of me, disappearing around a bend in the path. My breathing quickened; if I could only hurry… but my heart was bursting and my feet could go no faster. I was losing him. I awoke with his name in my mouth.

When I finally came to myself and decided I might live, I sat up, put my feet on the floor, and thought about what would happen now.

My sins were many.

Mary Morstan was a good woman, a good mother. In my own way, I loved her. She gave me the greatest gift, my daughter Rose. She had been understanding of my need to run off chasing criminals with Holmes, and had reason to be grateful to him. When he came to me that night, asking me to accompany him to Europe, she said that of course, I must go with him.

I was in her debt. But now that I had lost Holmes, I wasn’t sure I could spend the rest of my life paying her back. I had no choice, however. I had to atone for my sins.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, my bare feet growing cold on the wooden floor, I felt there really was nothing I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. Whatever joy I had known had left. Still, I got up, went into the bathroom, regarded my bearded face, now thin from weeks of illness, and decided to shave.

When I had cleared the whiskers from my cheeks and chin, I took scissors and began trimming my moustache. Then I began cutting it off. Finally, I lathered my upper lip and shaved the rest off.

Holmes had loved my moustache. I remembered how, in some moments of extreme passion, he would moan, “Oh, god, John— your moustache tickles me in places that have never seen daylight.”

I could not bear to look at myself. I needed to be another person, someone able to pretend that life was going on as before. A better man, who loved his wife and daughter and found that enough. A man who had not let his (beloved) best friend die.

When I had finished deleting my facial hair, I turned the scissors on my head.

“What are you doing?” Mary stood at the bathroom door.

“I need a haircut.” I resumed cutting, now simply hacking at my hair.

She took the scissors from my hand. “Let me. You look like a scarecrow.”

When she had finished evening up the mess I’d started, I was almost bald. I looked like a different person.

She regarded me silently, probably wondering what stranger had wandered into her house and taken her husband’s place. Though we had lived together for years at this point, neither of us knew the other’s innermost thoughts. Our conversations had only ever been transactional— the servants, the bills, our calendar, our daughter’s needs. Since my proposal, neither of us had asked what the other wanted in life, or how we might achieve that.

“It is not your fault.” I saw sympathy in her eyes that I had not realised was there.

I felt my face contort in sorrow. Shaking my head, I closed my eyes. “I should not have left him. I was supposed to protect him. That was my responsibility, to keep him safe.”

“He made his own choices, John. You are not responsible.”

I looked down at the tufts of hair that covered the floor. Gold hair, now shot through with grey. I felt like an old man. “I should have died.”

“No.” Her voice was sharp. “No, John. Never say that. Your daughter loves you. I need you.”

She did not say _I love you_ , because she did not. But I knew she would take care of me.

“It has been nearly two months. You must take off your mourning now and return work. I need you to be a husband, John, and Rosie needs her father. You will feel better when you busy yourself.”

“Mary, I can’t.”

She folded her arms across her chest and fixed me with a stern, unwavering expression. When she spoke, though, her voice was gentle. “Do you think you are the only lover who has ever lost someone dear?” She took my hand in hers, lay her fingers across my wrist. “The chemistry of love is incredibly simple, and very destructive.” She smiled at my astonishment. “Oh, John. You are fortunate to have had his love. He gave us both what we needed. But all lives come to an end, and the dead do not care for us.”

“You knew,” was all I could say.

“Be thankful,” she said. “Not all loves are reciprocated.”

I could think of only one thing this could mean. “I’ve hurt you.”

Shaking her head, she let out a huff of amusement. “I had a life before we met, husband. It’s good we have one another now.”

And perhaps it was.

My Mary is a practical woman. She had already felt the financial impact of my long mourning. I began to repay my debt to her.

My daughter Rose was a comfort to me, distracting me from my grief. Too young to understand what had happened to her father, but old enough to know that something had changed, once I was up and moving around again, she brought books to me and climbed into my lap, demanding that I read them to her. She was able to point at pictures and say a few words. This amused her and kept my mind occupied for stretches of time where I could almost forget.

I remembered him holding her at her baptism, how she looked up at him. He’d smiled at her, a smile I had never seen before, something tender and astonished in his expression. In his look, when he finally raised his eyes to me, I’d seen gratitude. He had not wanted my marriage, but he was thankful for my child and would protect her, as I myself would.

My Rose would not remember her godfather. He had not been to our home since his brief visit at Christmas. I regretted this intensely, wishing that I had insisted on him visiting her. But she was too young to form any long-term memories. She would keep the doll he had given her, the one she simply called _Papa Dolly._ Eventually, I would talk of him and show her his picture, and that would be all he was to her. Even so, she would feel the lack of him in her life, simply because I felt it.

When I began reading the newspaper again, I was astonished to learn that the raid on Moriarty’s gang had failed, and that Major Moran, his right hand, was speaking openly, accusing Holmes of faking his cases to gain a false reputation. Several influential members of Parliament supported him in these claims.

Moriarty was dead, but his brother Robert had written to all the papers as well, condemning Holmes and giving an absolute perversion of the facts which led to their confrontation at the falls. He claimed that Holmes had defamed his brother, ruining his reputation by intimating that he had been the Napoleon behind a vast network of crime. He pointed to his brother’s many mathematical monographs, his long teaching career, and his reputation as an academic of the highest order. He wrote, _It is astonishing how brazenly this man Holmes cut down James Moriarty’s many achievements. His lies destroyed a life of academic significance, leaving my poor brother no choice but to confront him. In death, however, I hope he will be at last avenged._

It was almost inevitable that people would begin to believe this nonsense. The first deductions that I ever heard from Holmes’ lips were about me, and I was incredulous that any man could be so brilliant. I learned his methods over time, coming to see how he reached such amazing deductions, but the public’s amazement never abated. To them it was a parlour trick. It is not surprising that people eventually condemn what they do not understand.

I had thought of writing a final story for the Strand magazine, describing Holmes’ heroic plunge over the falls. To a large extent, I was responsible for his public reputation. I had written him almost as an oracle, a characterisation he used to complain of with nearly every case I published. In order to make a good story, I withheld the reasoning which led him to his deductions, making myself the astonished observer and him the magician who at the last moment pulls a rabbit from his hat. My technique was theatrical, but it sold many stories. I saw no harm in it.

 _Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science,_ he told me, _and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces the same effect as if you worked a love story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid._

I had insisted that the romance was there; no facts could tamper with the romance I felt when I looked at him. The Holmes I created in the pages of _The Strand_ was a fictional character, though, devoid of sentiment, devoted to reason above all. I now understood my fault in showing him thus to the public. They had turned on him, convinced that he was a vain, fame-hungry man, that his entire career had been a fraud.

It was not possible to write up his final case, given the political climate. Instead, I wrote to the paper, answering these claims with such specificity as I could, and condemning Moran and Moriarty.

Mary tried to reason with me. “Sherlock Holmes gave you to me so that you would be safe. I am thankful that he has given me security as well. But now you put us both in danger by making these men look like criminals.”

“Criminal is what they are,” I responded. “And I will not let them tarnish the reputation of my dearest friend. Let them do their worst; I will never stop defending him.”

She had no reply to this, but could see her displeasure.

My letter brought some response, all of it negative. I noted the names of those who replied. Eventually, though, his death was old news.

I could not pull him out of the chasm. My nightmares still found me on that path above the falls, calling his name into the mist.

I kept the crape band on my hat. My first outing was to the Diogenes Club, where I asked for Mycroft Holmes.

Mycroft was not an effusive person. In many ways, he was the opposite of his younger brother, as cautious as Sherlock was reckless, as reserved as his brother was emotive. People sometimes thought my friend rational to the point of being heartless, but I knew his heart’s greatness, and I understood that his insistence on reason and science being the first principle of deduction was to ensure fairness and impartiality. I had often heard him remark that _it is a capital mistake to theorise before you have all the evidence._ And yet, he had a poetic nature as well, which revealed itself in music most of all. He was not only an astute listener, but a talented player.

By contrast, Mycroft Holmes was a larger, more corpulent man, much less energetic than his younger brother. There was nothing romantic about his appearance or comportment. He may have had a heart as great as his brother’s, but it was his formidable intellect that ruled. He had no passion for adventure or action. In whatever field he might have undertaken, he would have excelled at by sheer mental energy.

“Dr Watson,” he said when I was ushered into his room. “How very good of you to call on me.”

“Mr Holmes,” I said, inclining my head. “Allow me to pay my respects to you on the death of your dear brother.” My eyes filled then, and I could barely speak.

Mycroft indicated that I should sit, and asked his man to bring us some tea.

“You are too kind, Doctor,” he said once the tea appeared. “I would hardly have expected you to call when it is obvious that you have been very ill.”

Through my tears, I smiled at this. Holmes had always said that his brother excelled at observation, Mycroft’s skills surpassing his own. This was not a miraculous deduction, however. The elder Holmes had undoubtedly noticed my pallor and thinness.

“I only wish—” I said. “Mr Holmes, your brother was very good to me when I needed kindliness. On my return from Afghanistan, I was wounded and ill, alone, and almost destitute. He took me in, allowed me to share his quarters, and treated me with compassion.”

Mycroft smiled. “He needed someone to help him pay the rent.”

“It was much more than that. I had very little money; he generously let me delay paying him those first months. He tolerated my illness and my weakness, never suggesting that it was unpleasant to room with an invalid. And on more than one occasion, when I was too ill to care for myself—” I broke off again, overcome. “Your brother was too good to me, Mr Holmes. I regret that I can never repay that goodness.”

“Doctor, you gave my brother something that no one else had been able to give him. You were his friend. Whatever else you may have become to him, that was a singular experience for him, and a very beneficial one. He was a lonely boy who became a lonely man, resigned to a solitary life.” He smiled. “When he found the rooms at Baker Street, I encouraged him to seek a flatmate for just this reason. Knowing that he would rebel at the suggestion that he was lonely, I made him think that I was unwilling to pay his rent any longer. I have always been grateful that you befriended him.”

“I blame myself. These attacks against him I did not foresee.” I raised a hand to my mouth, trembling. “I have erred. It is because of my stories. I built him up, never thinking that the very popularity which sold stories would eventually turn on him. They think him a charlatan now, a fraud—“

“My dear doctor,” said Mycroft gently. “Tea is beastly, sloppy stuff when you need a real drink.” So saying, he took a cut glass decanter from a his sideboard and poured us each a tot of whisky. He raised his glass. “To Sherlock Holmes, a great man, and a good one.”

I raised my glass to his. “To Sherlock, my dearest friend, the wisest and best man I have ever known.”

We drank in silence. I was remembering my friend, my lover, still thinking of that moment at Reichenbach. Regret overwhelmed me.

“I must warn you,” Mycroft said at last. “Sherlock still has enemies, and they have longer plans than you may suspect. At present, they busy themselves attacking his memory, but soon they will attack you as well. They have already begun investigating my supposed part in Moriarty’s death. No doubt they will discover what they wish to discover, and try to discredit me with whatever lies they have decided upon. Do not let them do the same to you.”

“Let them do their worst,” I said. “They cannot defend Moriarty’s actions.”

“It is not Moriarty’s actions that will draw attention. It is yours, and his. I know that you have been discreet, and that your marriage to Miss Morstan would seem to discredit rumours, but these men are persistent, and they are ruthless as well. They will not stop until they have destroyed everything he held dear. Your ruin would achieve that, they believe. I beg you to be careful, Doctor. My brother would not have wanted to see you fall as well.”

I promised him that I would be careful. “I’m not sure if I can keep silent, however.”

“My brother’s death may have been accidental,” he told me, “but he would have willingly died to save your life, John.”

It was the first time I had ever heard him call me by my Christian name, like a brother. “As I would have died to save him.”

“Then remember this. He was also willing to live a lie for you, to pretend that you were friends, but nothing more. You must continue to live that lie. You must not sacrifice yourself for his reputation. Fame is ephemeral. What people think of us when we are gone is meaningless. You and I know the truth of Sherlock Holmes. That is enough. He never cared what people thought of him whilst he lived; were he alive now, he would not give a tinker’s damn to see people dragging his name through the gutter. Your reputation, however, concerned him greatly, and he was practical enough to see the value of deceiving others.” He leaned back, studying me with eyes that reminded me of his brother’s. “You are alive, John. Be safe. I am sure that his last thoughts were only of you, that you might continue to be safe.”

And so I carried on, living the lie, and hated myself for doing it. There were two of me now, the one who moved ahead, and the one who still grieved, feeling a fraud every time he pretended. My smiles belied my love for him, and when I took off my mourning, it was as if I were pushing him into that chasm.

I attempted to resume the practice I had abandoned, but found it difficult. Often I was ill, sometimes in body, more often in soul, and could not put in the necessary hours to acquire new patients to replace those who had left. The mortgage on my surgery, to which my home attached, was called in after several months of non-payment. My family and I were forced to seek less expensive quarters, and I had to work as a ward doctor in a voluntary hospital to pay for it. No longer having my own patients, I found my days busier, my pay smaller.

Mary did not complain that our household income was reduced. She had never been a woman who craved grand things, but she was practical. Before our marriage, I admired how stoically she accepted the loss of the fortune of Agra, which should have been hers. That sacrifice was what had inspired me to think that we might make a household together and raise children. My practice at that time was on the rise, and she was able to enjoy her status as the wife of a doctor. If she was less content at present, she still carried on managing our smaller income.

But now whispers had begun. In spite of the care we had taken to protect ourselves, there were innuendos. While a dead man can hardly be charged with _gross indecency_ , let alone sodomy, I was quite alive and, as Mycroft had warned me, their attacks turned on me.

It was suggested that I picked up young men of the lowest classes and went to clubs where even younger boys could be purchased. In some of these scenarios, Holmes was said to have accompanied me, our mutual perversion being what had drawn us together. My marriage was said to be a _beard_ for these activities. Those who knew us recognised these as the bold-faced lies they were, but we had lived our lives in strict privacy, and there were few people who could vouch for us. The very secrecy we had used to protect us now argued against our innocence.

When we moved into our smaller lodgings, Mary told me that she could accept temporary embarrassment, but if the rumours began to seem credible, she would not hesitate to leave, taking my child with her.

To hear her say this was devastating, but I could not blame her. Nor could I promise her anything.

The campaign against Holmes continued to trouble me. Though it had happened months ago, I wondered what had happened with the raid on Moriarty’s confederates, why it had not succeeded. The entire motivation for our departure for the continent was to ensure that the raid went off successfully. Had we been in London, it is possible that our very presence in the city might have tipped them off somehow. Holmes had needed to keep his hands clean of the situation.

Someone had alerted them. Mycroft had hinted at this. I might blame Scotland Yard, wondering which of the men we dealt with there had betrayed us. I did not dare visit Mr Lestrade, whose career had been damaged by his association with Holmes and me. He had been a friend, but foul weather often shows a man where he must put his efforts. Mr Lestrade had a wife and children; he applied himself to regaining his position. I cannot say that I blamed him. Was I not doing much the same, working where I could find a place in my profession, putting on as respectable an appearance as I could manage?

I felt like a traitor to Holmes as I went about my duties.

In the idealism of youth, we all think we are invincible. Real life dissuades us from that and teaches us that we have but to err once and we will suffer the consequences for longer than we can foresee. I had made many mistakes. I did not count loving Sherlock Holmes as one of them, but the law is not concerned with morality or mistakes. It cares only about its own letter.

Moran’s campaign had many fronts. While he continued to urge Parliament to investigate Mycroft Holmes, he attacked Sherlock in the newspaper, in the clubs, and in Parliament. I, of course, was the recipient of much of this vitriol. I had known him, worked with him, lived with him.

When I first returned from Afghanistan, impoverished and invalided, I developed a problem with alcohol, which in turn led to a gambling problem. Holmes cured me of both, giving me something else to live for and standing by me when I wavered. Now I found myself in similar straits. Gambling no longer attracted me, but I found solace for my grief and anger in drink.

My brother had drunk himself to death, so I was well aware of the dangers of this addiction, but all my prior supports were gone. Holmes was no longer keeping the liquor cabinet under lock and key, and Mary did not know of my weakness. I drank alone, mostly, but occasionally drank at my club, with friends. I am afraid I became an embarrassment to my acquaintances. A man who cannot hold his liquor may once or twice receive compassion from his friends. When it becomes a regular event, he is avoided. It did not matter. After a few such incidents, I could no longer pay my club’s monthly fee, and gave up my evenings of billiards and cards.

Instead, I began to frequent pubs. Though many neighbourhood pubs are the meeting place of friends, for me it was a refuge into the oblivion of liquor. I did not care who I met there, who I shared a drink with, who sat in company with me. I went to drink and become drunk. Holmes had hauled me home the few times I indulged while he was alive. On the first anniversary of my brother’s death, I succumbed once. After the funeral of a dear friend from my days in Afghanistan, I again fell. Both times he came and gently fetched me home, reminding me that I was better than this, that he depended on my intelligence and loyalty. He had similarly suffered the effects of cocaine and morphine addiction and understood that draw.

These things are all legal, but can nevertheless be deadly. It is ironic that I was saved by something illegal, namely the love of another man. Holmes made me a better man than the one who first met him, looking to share rooms. He claims the same for me. Our illicit relationship was the salvation of me.

But now I did not have him to pull me out of the gutter. My wife was not the kind of woman who understands weakness; she herself was a strong woman, with a moral core forged out of misfortune. She had married a man who seemed able to keep himself out of trouble. When I began to fall, she did not know how to help.

I do not blame her. Though we marry _for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part,_ most of us do not have to face these trials. I had money when we married, enough to sustain a household and several children. I was healthy and well-respected, in no danger of falling ill or losing my job. When I spoke those words to her in church, I did not think we would be so tested. 

In the spring of 1893 I returned home from a pub night that followed a difficult work day to find her packed and ready to go. My daughter was at a friend’s house, she said. She would pick her up and take a train north, to Edinburgh, where she would live with a cousin until she could find a position to support herself and my daughter. It would be better, she said, if I did not say goodbye to Rose. One day she would explain it to her, inasmuch as she could.

I continued to wear my wedding ring.

I moved into smaller quarters, taking with me the few mementos of my former life that I still had. I had kept one of Holmes’ dressing gowns, the grey one that he favoured; the old, worn leather case that contained his pocket lens; the briar-root pipe that fit his hands so well. We had only rarely written to one another when we were separated; those letters were cautious and unsentimental. I saved them all the same, along with his final note and the silver cigarette case he’d left behind at the falls.

He was a cerebral creature, a man of reason and rapid thought, an almost preternatural clairvoyance leading him to conclusions ordinary men could not see. I missed those moments, his grey eyes darting restlessly over the evidence, his long hands moving as if shaping his very thoughts, the joy of the epiphany dawning on his lean face. Holmes had a mind like none I have known, not even the most brilliant of my professors. He had not only knowledge; he possessed an agility of mind as well. I missed our conversations, seeing his line of reasoning take shape.

And he called me his conductor of light, as if I enabled him to understand what he saw. I was necessary to him, he said, though I could never see how. No, I was never brilliant. I am intelligent, but in the same plodding way that ordinary men think and learn and understand. He was extraordinary, dazzling, brilliant.

Love may be thought of as a spiritual thing, the meeting of two souls that recognise one another. This was the Holmes I carried with me in those lonely days, remembering his mind and spirit.

But love is primarily physical, which is what makes it infinitely mysterious. My mind could understand that he was gone, but my body could not accept his loss. Like a dog who knows its master, my heart waited at the door for him, expecting his body, its scent and solid being. I longed to feel his hands on me, to smell his skin, to taste his mouth, and know him as mine. In sleep, I expected his angular body pressed against me, his hands roaming over my flesh, and I woke hard, wanting his solid touch. Knowing that he lay dead at the bottom of a waterfall did nothing to still my longing.

At times my mind took a terrible turn, imagining that fall and its aftermath. I am a doctor and have seen many horrific injuries, bullets shattering skulls, broken bones protruding, the gory scene after the explosion of a shell, hunting through a pile of bodies to see if one has survived. I understood and could visualise the effects of falling from such a height. Against my will, I imagined him, and I wept. They had never found his body, and it was assumed that it had been caught in those churning depths. Even knowing what the fall must have done to him, I had wanted to see his body and to bring it home. Fate had denied me that.

These were my waking nightmares. At night, I slept alone in a cold bed, wrapped in a dead man’s dressing gown.

My tenure at the voluntary hospital ended two years later when charges of gross indecency were brought against me. The choice I had was painful: either to deny Holmes, call him a fraud, and thereby keep myself safe (as he had wished); or to unrepentantly admit that we had been lovers and go to prison for that. I was not ashamed to be the lover of Sherlock Holmes, but the law made us guilty. I could not change that. I did not want to lie, but denying my guilt would demand a trial, which would drag both of our reputations through the mud. I had seen what the papers did with flimsy evidence; I would not allow them to make up more lies.

Charges of fraud and conspiracy were also brought, which Mycroft said I could successfully challenge. I had been to see him again a week earlier, knowing what was coming. He looked less robust than the last time we had met. His limbs had thinned out, but his belly and face were bloated. The doctor in me began thinking of all the things that might cause such an oedema. He was forty-seven years old, not yet an old man. His habits had once been careless, but he had reformed his ways, regained a solid measure of health. Now he looked ill, and appeared to have aged by ten years.

“You are not well,” I observed.

“England is not well,” he replied. “It sickens me to see her stumble so. Our prime minister is in the pocket of these men, and more than half of Parliament supports him. Imbeciles! I have long understood that the average member of Parliament is a fool, but I did not think so many were bloody fools. Moran and his people are destroying us.”

I tried to encourage him. “You are bitter with reason. But there must be something we can do— surely there are those who do not agree with Moran’s agenda. Please tell me what I can do, Mycroft.”

He shook his head. “Save yourself, Doctor. Take a plea bargain, admit to the least of the charges. Go home to Edinburgh and put it behind you. Many years of life lie before you. It will not be easy, but you must live. You cannot beat these men by going to prison.”

“No,” I said, resolute and resigned. “My life ended at the falls. I will not deny him.”

“Two years hard labor,” he said. “That’s just for the gross indecency charge. You must try to get the other charges dropped. My sollicitor will help you with that.”

“Very well,” I said. “I appreciate your advice, Mycroft, whatever happens. You have been a good friend through all of this.”

There are things I wished we’d talked about then, things I wished I’d asked him. Sherlock had never talked much about his childhood or youth, and I would like to have heard Mycroft describe that. It would have created a dear image in my mind, almost as if we had been boys together. That image might have sustained me in the trials ahead. I wish I had asked.

But I could not have predicted that it would the last time we would see one another. He died some weeks later. Oedema was the cause, they said, a result of heart failure. I did not see him, but a colleague of mine described to me his death bed. He must have died in agony. As a doctor, I can name several things that could cause that amount of fluid to accumulate in a body. One of those things is poison.

Once I was told that the dead do not speak to us in dreams because even the slumbering mind recognises the impossibility of that. I do not say that I believe this. In my own dreams, I have experienced many things that defy reality, and yet are more real than what the waking world presents.

In my dreams, he is here now, at last. We are in the mountains, as before, and I can hear the water rush, feel the spray on my face. Up ahead, he beckons to me, smiling that secret smile, the one meant only for me. The sun touches his curls, turning them red-gold. He tilts his head back and laughs for joy. There is no Moriarty for him to face now, no death waiting for him at the bottom of that cataract. It is as it was in the beginning, the two of us. He holds out his hand to me, and I go forward to meet him.


End file.
